Peter Gray took his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Cambridge before holding research fellowships at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s, and at Downing College, Cambridge. He taught Irish and British history at the University of Southampton 1996-2005, before returning to Belfast to take up the position of Professor of Modern Irish History. In 2004 Professor Gray was the Burns Library Visiting Professor in Irish Studies at Boston College, Massachusetts, and was Fredrik and Catherine Eaton Visiting Fellow at the University of New Brunswick in 2015. He was chair of the Royal Irish Academy’s National Committee for Historical Sciences 2007-10, and was Head of the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s in 2010-15. He is a member and former president of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies. He was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2013. He has been Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast since November 2016, and is Chair of the Wiles Lectures Trustees.

Research Interests

Professor Gray’s research specialism is in the history of British-Irish relations c.1800–70, especially the political history of the Great Famine of 1845–50 and the politics of poverty and land in the nineteenth century. He has written a history of the origins and implementation of the 1838 Irish Poor Law Act, and is currently researching the life of the Ulster radical William Sharman Crawford. He has interests in the history of nineteenth-century political economy and social thought, in comparative imperial history (especially nineteenth-century Ireland and India), in historical memory and commemoration, and in the history of the Irish lord lieutenancy.

‘Mabel Sharman Crawford’s Life in Tuscany: Ulster radicalism in a hot climate’, in M. Corporaal and C. Morin (eds), Traveling Irishness in the long nineteenth century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 35-50.

‘”The Great British Famine of 1845-50″? Ireland, the UK and peripherality in famine relief and philanthropy’, in D. Curran, L. Luciuk and A.G. Newby (eds), Famines in European economic history: the last great European famines reconsidered (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 83-96.

‘Irish social thought and the relief of poverty, 1847-1880’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, xx (2010), pp. 141-56 [Full Text]

‘Accounting for catastrophe: William Wilde, the 1851 Irish census and the Great Famine’, in M. de Nie and S. Farrell (eds), Power and popular culture in modern Ireland: essays in honour of James S. Donnelly, Jr., (Dublin: IAP, 2010), pp. 50-66.

‘Introduction’, and ‘The making of mid-Victorian Ireland? Political economy and the memory of the Great Famine, 1847-80’, in P. Gray (ed.), Victoria’s Ireland? Irishness and Britishness 1837-1901 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), pp. 9-14, 151-166

‘Introduction: the memory of catastrophe’ [with Kendrick Oliver], and ‘Memory and the commemoration of the Great Irish Famine’, in P. Gray and K. Oliver (eds.), The memory of catastrophe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 1-18, 46-64

‘The peculiarities of Irish land tenure 1800–1914: from agent of impoverishment to agent of pacification’ in D. Winch and P. K. O’Brien (eds), The political economy of British historical experience, 1688–1914 (Oxford: OUP, 2002), pp. 139-62.

‘The agrarian thought of William Sharman Crawford’, European Social Science History Conference, Belfast, 4-7 April 2018.

‘Representations of Irish famine and rebellion in the British satirical press, 1845-49’, at ‘Graphic Satire in the Long Nineteenth Century’, University of Nottingham, 5 Sept. 2017

‘“Trevelyanism”, the state and famine in Ireland and British India, 1845-80’, at 11th EFACIS Conference, University of A Coruna, Spain, 31 Aug-2 Sept. 2017

‘Assessing the British government’s response to the Irish Famine’, at Empires and famine in comparative historical perspective, Ukrainian House, Kyiv, Ukraine, 5-6 June 2017

‘William Sharman Crawford and the Great Famine’, ACIS, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 29 Mar.-1 Apr. 2017

‘Was the Great Irish Famine a colonial famine?’ (keynote) at Empire, Colonialism, and Famine in Comparative Historical Perspective, University of Toronto, Canada, 28-29 Oct. 2016

‘Deploying the memory of Irish famine: the crises of 1859-63 and 1879-81 and the contested meaning of the Great Famine’, at Collapse of Memory – Memory of Collapse, Lund University, Sweden, 20-22 Sept. 2016

‘William Sharman Crawford, the Famine, and land reclamation’, at ‘Nature and the Environment in Ireland during the Long 19th Century’, University of Southampton, 16-17 June 2016

‘“HB’s” Famine cartoons: satirical art in a time of catastrophe’, at ‘The Great Famine and its Impacts: Visual and Material Culture’, Maynooth University, 14-16 March 2016.

‘1847 – Year Zero?’, Nineteenth Century European Famines in Comparison, University of Helsinki, Finland, 7 Dec. 2015

Keynote: ‘Locality and region in the making of British famine policy’, at 4th Annual Famine Conference: ‘The Local and Regional Impact of the Great Irish Famine’, Strokestown Park, Co. Roscommon, 20-21 June 2015

‘Mabel Sharman Crawford’s Life in Tuscany: Ulster radicalism in a hot climate’, EFACIS conference, University of Palermo, Italy, 3-6 June 2015